A founding member of the Democratic Party, Law Chi-kwong is the only member of Chief Executive Carrie Lam’s cabinet with a pro-democratic background. He’s here with me to talk about his new role as Secretary for Labour and Welfare.

From coping with the squatter settlements that housed mainland immigrants who poured into Hong Kong after the Communist revolution, to today’s situation where we have the world’s most expensive property market, housing a growing population has been a headache for many administrations. According to last year’s Hong Kong Council of Social Service survey, more than half of the population aged between 20 and 34 are earning less than the median wage of $14,700. Only 30% of them say they are satisfied with the economy, and a mere 20% believe that it will be possible to buy a home in the future. The government said that due to land shortages it will only be able to build 236,000 public housing flats instead of its target of 280,000 by 2027. Meanwhile, the average waiting time for public housing now stands at four years and eight months.

We’ll be talking to the man who helped to shape Hong Kong’s post war public housing design: the 104-year-old former head of the Public Works Department, Michael Wright on London, and Marco Wu, the man who’s been dubbed the father of the Home Ownership Scheme.